Yes, this is rather familiar literature; you'll findthe same thing going on in PDX, not that different fromthe "community policing" movement we used to read aboutmore (it's still a literature, but more vintage, likeElvis).

Regarding your "Education Mafia", you're obviously notworried about offending Italians, many of whom are somewhatdefensive of Mia Familia, kind of like many Irish about the IRA, who then decry any "Islamic brotherhood" in trueCatholic fashion, despite the great similarity in the "us against them" mentality.

My question is why is your resistance movement so ineffectual? We've been hearing about this criminal syndicate, pouring money down the drain, for some time, yet it only seems to get worse, no matter which so-calledadministration as at the so-called helm.

My guess is it's the narrowness of your special interest,i.e. you don't like to discuss profligate waste and inefficiencies in other sectors, even for contrast, so wedon't get a complete picture. When it comes to education in STEM topics, you still can't beat the military for having a big budget, even if you're Princeton. Our marching band was actually banned from Navy events as I recall, for indecorous behavior (in the Ivy League tradition (i.e. "bad at sports" as some guides will tell you on your Orange Key tour of the campus)).

You've got a rather hard-to-understand language I think is the problem. "Mutli-culturalism" is an unmitigatedly bad thing, and yet "melting pot" is just fine. One readsabove of a $250K grant getting teachers to spend time ontheir beat, actually being in the community they're serving (vs. "commuting to work"), and one wonders: is this what a melting pot looks like? I think you'd shout"no!" but then where are you coming from with that? What*should* teachers be doing, if not learning about the real lives of the people they professionally serve?Seattle has lots of Asian and NavAm (pre colonialist) communities, not to mention half-breed Swedes like me.